December 3, 2013

This exercise is intended for beginning programmers who need to strengthen their understanding of linked lists. It comes in three parts:

First, write a function that reverses the elements of a linked list pairwise; for instance, given the list (1 2 3 4 5 6) the pairwise reversal is (2 1 4 3 6 5). If the list has an odd number of elements, keep the last element at the end of the list; for instance, given the list (1 2 3 4 5) the pairwise reversal is (2 1 4 3 5).

Third, write a function that reverses the elements of a linked list by halves; for instance, given the list (1 2 3 4 5 6) the half-wise reversal is (3 2 1 6 5 4), with each half reversed independently. If the list has an odd number of elements, the middle element may be assigned to either half at the discretion of the programmer.

Your task is to write the three functions given above. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.